Angry relatives vow to continue fight after Beslan killer gets life

The relatives of those who died in the September 2004 Beslan school siege vowed to continue their campaign for justice last night after the sole surviving hostage-taker was convicted on murder and terrorism charges and sentenced to life in prison.

The verdict on Nurpashi Kulayev, 25, a Chechen carpenter, did little to satisfy relatives who saw hundreds of innocent people die in the bloody climax of the siege in the southern Russian town.

Kulayev was found guilty of taking hostages, causing the deaths of 330 people and inflicting material damage worth 34m roubles (£700,000).

The Beslan Mothers' Committee (BMC) and other groups have consistently claimed that the terror inflicted by the gang of 32 militants was compounded by official bungling. Families of the dead and injured were divided over whether Kulayev should have received the death penalty demanded by prosecutors.

Rita Sidakova of the BMC, who lost her daughter in the standoff, told the Guardian she and other members of the group wanted to see Kulayev publicly executed in the centre of Beslan. "His heart did not fail him when they were torturing children or at any moment during the whole trial, so there is no chance he will repent [in prison]," she said. Marina Melikova, another member of the group, said: "So many lives were ruined when people were herded like livestock into that gym. He didn't deserve to live."

But Ella Kesayeva of the rival Voice of Beslan told reporters Kulayev remained too valuable a witness to be killed. "Preserving Kulayev's life gives us hope that all circumstances of the terrorist act in Beslan sooner or later will be investigated," she said.

The siege began on the first day of the school year when a gang of armed, mostly Chechen and Ingush, militants herded 1,128 children, teachers and parents into the gymnasium at Beslan's School No 1.

For three days they were deprived of water and forced to watch friends and relatives executed as the militants demanded that Russian forces withdraw from Chechnya. The standoff ended when an explosion inside the building caused the roof to collapse and triggered wild firing by the militants and locals surrounding the building. Kulayev, who appeared in footage from inside the school, said "these are all invented tales" when asked if he understood the verdict yesterday. He claimed he was coerced to participate.

Judge Tamurlan Aguzarov told the court Kulayev deserved the death sentence but had escaped it because of a moratorium on capital punishment.

The security forces have denied accusations they used heavy weapons while hostages were alive in the building.

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